The 60th Gopher State Roundup in Bloomington, MN

My name is Paul, an alcoholic. Good to be here and it's good to be sober. And I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity in some small part of the service here tonight. And my first thought is there, is there anybody in Minneapolis that's not here tonight? You know,

you go die in time. Now it's like one guy walking around going where the hell is everybody, you know?

And he's alcoholic. He'd be like, oh, they're all at the party and nobody invited me, you know, I didn't want to go anywhere. You know,

I just got a little spiritual postcard here from Bob.

The speakers have been wonderful so far. Don't screw it up.

Thank you, Bob, that vote of no confidence and

and something. But you know that we say here, oh, you're a good speaker and you're good speaker. But I run with some people who they're non Alcoholics. They think being a good speaker and Alcoholics Anonymous. It's like being the tallest of the seven dwarfs, you know,

kind of like cachet in here, but doesn't go too far out there, you know? And

Tom and eagle to flesh. And I call my sponsor tonight. I always do. We get into this dog and pony show. You say, where are you? I said I'm in Minneapolis. Oh, you went all the way to Minneapolis to talk.

You go to listen.

No,

seeing Paul, you know,

I but I told him how much he mattered to me, which is really I've stepped forward for me and Alcoholics Anonymous before I came to a I was like the Irish man who loved his wife so much he almost told her, you know.

And speaking about ego deflation, I was at a conference there recently and this guy come up to me and he goes, are you Paul Mcquade and the good news about sobriety. I answered quickly and in the affirmative. You know, I said yes, I am before it have been like, what can I get back to you on that? You know, and

if I was Paul Mcquade, why do you want to know? And on the off chance that I am, he says yes. He goes, I just want to tell you, you saved my life.

So my very shallow low self esteem starts to lift and I go, pray tell more, you know, and hold nothing back, you know. And

he says, yes, I was in a car in a long car ride and my wife and my mother-in-law were in the back seat and they were arguing incessantly, like bickering back and forth. I couldn't take it anymore. And I always carry some AC D's in the glove box and I reached in and I grabbed 1I stuck it in and it was you speaking. So right away. And I'm now the topic now about self appointed expectations. This is what I think he's going to say. I think he's going to say Paul. The meant I put your CD in

and your melodic voice started emanate from the speakers.

It felt like the car was enveloped in a sense of serenity.

A sense of peace and goodwill to all mankind washed over us

and it felt like the wheels lifted off the road and the car started to float down the road.

And then the sunroof opened and a white dove came down and sat on my head

and I heard a voice in This is Paul, who I'm well pleased with.

But what he did say is see I put your CD in and after 5 minutes I turned round and my wife and mother-in-law were fast asleep in the back of the car.

He goes, thanks a lot. You know, I'm like, don't mention it.

So just a shout out to the tapers here tonight. If you have trouble moving the CD,

which you probably will even though I preordered 200 just to take the bad luck off it, you know,

may I suggest you send out an e-mail blaster? Some of the local sleep disorder centres you know.

Do you desire coma like sleep?

Help is on the way.

Paul McQueen, guaranteed to bring you from insomnia to narcolepsy in one Listen, you know,

honey, give me I can even write the reviews. This guy is so boring he can put me to sleep. Sign the Sandman. You know,

I was just scratching the surface till I heard this guy saying Rip Van Winkle. You know,

Anyway, I'd like to tell you a little bit of how it was and what happened Harners today, and as I move into the second or third hour of this talk that I'm going to give tonight,

should be able to cover. I just seen the blood drain in a newcomers feast over here.

I know this may come to shock to some people, but I'm not from the neighborhood originally.

It's about 25 years now since I left my native Cuba and

like Theresa was then last name with the Irish. We talked pretty quick too. You know, I'm I'm really starting to feel for these guys. This guy be sitting later on with his with his hands and two buckets of ice. You know,

I went there to do service and now I got carpal tunnel syndrome. Thanks a lot. You know,

but.

Joint flags. What can I tell you? You know,

but

it's an honour at this story. I'll tell you a little bit. You know, I'm from Northern Ireland. I grew up just out of the city of Belfast and the sort of neighbourhood I came from. If you didn't drink, your move, you know, everybody drank. You know, I didn't know anybody that didn't drink. And

I, I just want to welcome you here at Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. If you're new here tonight, there was some people that were new. I want to welcome you to the greatest singular event in my life. I want to tell you what was told to me. I was true in my life that this is the last thing I tried and the first thing it ever worked.

I trade many ways to stop and drinking, but I couldn't stare stopped because I was shackled to self to talk about insanity for an alcoholic. Oh, you see somebody dancing on the bar? That's not insanity. I bartender for years. That's just a rational behaviour, right? Rational drunken behaviour. If you want to see real insanity in my life, send me out there with no drink and no program

but use people here tonight. And we need these newcomers. Alcoholics Anonymous. Like a backwater pond that needs fresh water. If it doesn't get fresh water, become stagnant and nothing grows in stagnant water, I die. You die. We all die. What's the point? And I think about what these two men have done here behind me, Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob. We can trace this moment in time back to that moment in time when Bill Wilson didn't you know that we. I don't know where it became in vogue that

newcomer has to call the person with sobriety.

Bill Wilson went looking for Doctor Bob because he realized if I can help another alcoholic. I missed his sober myself. The turning point in all our lives and in that Seminole spiritual moment when Bill Wilson with six months of bratty went looking for Doctor Bob. And the thing about it was Doctor Bob was an educated guy and even talked to talk dad preach that preached over. But this was different. This was somebody talking his language

and the incredible thing that's almost missed, I missed it myself. When Bill Wilson went talking to Doctor Bob, he didn't say to Doctor Bob, I got six months and you should do this and this and this. He said I got six months and this is what I did,

and that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is. It's pure pragmatism. We keep what worked and we got rid of what didn't work. You talk about

laboratory tested. People died drunk. They got this thing right because there's not a whole lot of options for Alcoholics of our variety. There's jails, institutions and death. And once you've been to the first few a few times, the third one starts to look like a good option.

But there's a fourth option on the table that's a pretty good one. It's called sobriety, courtesy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Where people like, like us can come in here on the worst night of our lives. And it is not the grace of God when you walk in here on the one night you need to drink the most. And you're given the grace not to drink. And it's so much more than grace because it's mercy. What is mercy? Real mercy is entering into someone else's chaos

and that's what Alcoholics Anonymous did in my life when everybody was going that way, a, a Kim this way.

And we do together what I can't do alone. As I said, there's the last thing I tried and the first thing ever worked. And we're here today and our sobriety. I was just watching the the Bill Wilson interview upstairs before I come down and I'd heard this before, but he talked about that vision that he had in towns hospital, this chain like one alcoholic happened, another alcoholic,

one ahead and one behind. And that's what I ask in my 10th step. How strong is my link in the chain? Is it strong to the people that went ahead of me? And more importantly, is a stronger the people coming behind me? If someone comes up to me tonight and says, Paul, can I go to that place? Can I comprehend the word and no serenity? Can I know peace? Absolutely. Walk this journey with us

because we trudge this road together. We're not sitting in some bar drunk tonight trying to figure out what's it all about, you know?

You know those 3:00 in the morning conversations?

Am I here? Are you here? Is this all really here? You know,

I know everything I need to know. Why Foreign art and Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic that tells me who I am, what I am, where I am, and most importantly, what I need to be doing. And if I know that everything's all right and when everything, when I'm all right, everything around me is all right too, even if it's not Alcoholics Anonymous bad very virtue. Help me to come to terms with my past

so that live in the present, which is the rest of today

for the future.

What a program. I come in here just to stop drinking and I got so much more. If you're new here tonight, I want to offer you it was offered to me, hope and human form. That's what alcoholic synonymous is.

Would rather see us German than hear one. People get people sober. God works through people and the spiritual conduit that he's using here is a fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm doing a alone, I ain't doing a a, I'm doing something but an NAACP.

I need you. And that's what Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob that time when they first met each other. And I'm sure the I don't know if the words were actually said, but it was it was a shot heard round a drunken world because what Bill Wilson was saying to Doctor Bob, he said I need you and you need me because I am you and you are me. And like my good friend Lizby always says, without you there is no me.

Alcoholic tsunamis. This collective thing may come in here. And the thing about it is we come in here. We seen it from 50 years right down to one day.

And we come in here and it says in one of our books that Alcoholics Anonymous is one of those places with a whole is greater than the sum of the parts, one day, a month, a year, 10 years. And we come in here and we throw it all in the middle.

An energy, spiritual energy, is like electricity. It flows on positive to negative, not the other way around, and we lift each other up

by their very virtue of our sobriety. And we all have worth and value here tonight,

whether you've got 50 years or one day, because you know what? We're dealing in God's economy here. And in God's economy, everybody has worth and value. And the coin of the realm on the spiritual currency that we use is experience, strength and hope. How we drank, how we got sober, and our hope for the new person. What a concept, what a program. I often tell a story

about her. Alcoholics Anonymous got started in Ireland.

And if there's ever a country that needed Alcoholics Anonymous, believe me, it was Ireland.

Even to this day, I was, I was just over there last weekend. It's still coming along like A&R. You don't get too many sightseers, you know what I'm saying? You know, you don't have to ask who the newcomers are. You know who they are. They're usually sit in the back row with a a black eye and a busted lip from being in a street fight. And that's just the women. The guys look even worse. You know,

in 1946, there was no way in Ireland because the guy got sober. He was from Ireland. He got sober in Philadelphia. His name was Connor F I'm sure in the story to tell you the power of 1 alcoholic working with another when all else failed, send an A, a could. I guarantee you tonight there's somebody drinking them. Say I don't have to knock on too many doors tonight. I've never been in this bill, never in this time before in my life. But if I leave this auditorium and I, I want him to knock on too many doors and I'll find somebody drinking themselves to death right now,

totally oblivious to what's going on in Alcoholics Anonymous and the friends and the family. And welcome to Al Anon tonight who are standing around the bed saying, what should we do and what should we call and who should we call? And my program says, call me. I mightn't get chosen, but I got to be willing to go because Alcoholics Anonymous knows what to do with the man or the woman on the bed. When all else fails, send in Alcoholics Anonymous

and that picture of them on the bed. It sums up

the whole spiritual virtues of Alcoholics Anonymous. You see the guy sitting on the bed, hunched in shoulders. Tara, frustration, bewilderment, despair is very body language, screaming off the painting and the two people from Mayer leaning in, open, expansive. Please come with this walk this journey with us.

And we said they're in Ireland in 1946, this guy Connor effort two years of sobriety. He went home to Ireland on a retirement vacation and he realized there was no AA in Ireland. He sent a letter to general service and they said, well, why don't you start a meeting and the sentiment start up package a bit like Bill Wilson 10 or 11 years earlier. He ran around, got a lot of closed doors, a lot of whatever,

and finally met a woman just like Henrietta, saberling. Her name was Eva Jennings, a non alcoholic and she says I know a Doctor

Who works with Alcoholics

and he got talking to this doctor and this doctor says I work with Alcoholics and I haven't even heard of AA.

But I'll tell you what, we got a guy down in one of the beds down here. His name is Richard P. This guy's been detoxed 25 or 30 times. You make any impression on him? I'll give you the full support of this hospital. Connor F. And down to the guy's room

and did what I'm going to try to do tonight shared experience, strength and hope. Harry drank. Harry got sober and the hope for the man the bed. Richard P just like Doctor Bob have been talked to talk that preach that preached over. But this was different. This was somebody eyeballed eyeball. This was somebody who knew his language. This was the language of the heart. That thing that we have here together where we understand each other. I might have stood next to you drinking in the bar, but when you see an alcoholic, I know enough.

I know you've experienced Tara for her situation, bewilderment, despair. I know you put a drink to your lips as the tears rolled on your face. I know, like in my case, you drank against your own will, for God's sake. I know that quicksand stretched all around you on many occasions. And Richard P realized this guy was talking his language and he got out of his bed. And this guy was sometimes getting drunk on the way home from the hospital, and he got out of the bed and he left and never took another drink of the day. Died in 1973.

That's the power of Alcoholics Anonymous

and those two men started the first meeting in Dublin and

God up about 45 members in the first summer. I check this out the first summer, 85% of the Home group, the first group got drunk. Could you imagine 85% your Home group getting drunk

but they hung in there and they hunkered down. Some can back, some didn't and A is alive and well now in Ireland. Have a special place in my heart.

I have a special place in my heart for A in Ireland. I was over there last week. My brothers got about 16 years. I'm from the north of Ireland, I'd say to Belfast, and it warms my heart to see what happens in A and Northern Ireland. They talk about people who normally don't mix. How about people who never mix,

but there's one place that they mix in Alcoholics Anonymous? I've been at AM meetings in some of the darkest days of the Troubles. Things are peaceful now, but when things are rough and there was one people, one place that people come together and it was Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember again, I was home on vacation one time and I got asked to speak at a meeting and things were bad. I mean really bad. And we drove into Belfast and they were burning buses and barricades and we drove across from

Belfast to East Belfast. I'm a Catholic, I know a Protestant area. We drove across what's called the peace line. And like, I've been living in America for a long time and I got three other guys in the car and you got to cut the atmosphere with a knife, you know, one. But I love a a humour. This one guy says, just think of it, Paul. The last time a Catholic was in this part of Belfast after dark. He was in the trunk of the car, you know.

So we went to the meeting and these guys realized the commitment that we're taking under the circumstances, and no words were said, but a firm handshake. I laughed. There's all these kids hanging around and they got a thing called joyride with a steel car. Trade them around and burn them. And the guy says

to the kids, hey, kids, don't touch that car. These guys are friends of ours

and we went into the meeting

and we left everything outside the door and I sat in a meeting with people that I was probably diametrically opposed on every issue except one, our alcoholism. And that one issue that was more united as that night than ever divided us.

I'm not going to tell you we left the meeting and went skipping down the road, singing come by. Ah,

but I felt good knowing they were sober in the world. And I think they have felt good knowing that we were sober in the world. This is a special place we have here the magnificent reality of Alcoholics Anonymous. I never wanted. I'll be honest with you. I'll be honest with you. I never took so bratty for granted. But I took a for granted. Yeah. There's a meeting down there. It's three nights a week. You should be happy that I'm going.

And then you hang around here and you learn the history

and you learn what's going on here, and you realize that times and a is early history that are their very lives hung by a thread on a left turn here or right turn there. And who knows where we would be? Because I believe of all what is a miracle? I know we threw the word miracle around a Latin a, a, you know, I got up this morning, had a bagel. It was a miracle.

It had cream cheese. Another miracle.

What is a miracle? A miracle is a complete reversal of the up or upheaval of the laws of nature. It's in my nature to be drunk right now and I'm not now. How did that happen? Didn't happen because of me. It happened because of alcoholic synonymous, that first word of the first step. We, I drink, we stay sober

and this wonderful thing. And I, there's a guy that speaks guy Tom and I like what he says. He says. And I'll echo those words because they're so true personally and I'll speak in the singular and I'm so glad we talked about the history was talked about here. I don't want this thing going down on my watch.

I want this thing to be around for a long, long time.

But it says in one of our books, since man first crushed grapes, there's been people like us. Couldn't fit in, took drink, couldn't fit in, ran at life with drink, ran away from life with drink. We were society's first outcasts. Nobody knew what to do with this until Alcoholics Anonymous came along and Bill Wilson went to Doctor Bob. Because you see, I need you and you need me.

Because when you talk about you, I found out about me.

And the great news of Alcoholics and Anonymous is we are not alone anymore.

You know, one day in my own life, you know, I used to get into a lot of mental gymnastics when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Why did I become an alcoholic? Were there to become an alcoholic? When did I become an alcoholic? You know, the old alcoholic conundrum. What came first, the chicken or the keg? You know?

Few Alcoholics got drunk trying to figure that one out, you know?

I mean, I believe if you sit down, you could probably figure out why you took the first drink.

Intellectual curiosity, rite of passage, peer pressure. But why the compulsive drinking? I sat down with four or five guys my first night drinking. We whacked up a couple of cases of beer. Why was I the one guy? I know them to this day. Why was I the one guy that destroyed his life over and over and over again? I don't know. If you're looking at the answer to that question. I don't know.

I don't know why I became an alcoholic and those other guys didn't, but I'll tell you I know why I stopped drinking.

I stopped drinking and when I came to Alcoholics nomads I heard these 3 words.

Pitiful and comprehensible demoralization

is not a person this room who drank alcoholically or doesn't know what those words mean, and they mean different. Everybody. I didn't have to ask for a thesaurus. Could you explain that? Again, I'm not really getting it. Pitiful income

for me. It was sitting in an apartment in Rockaway Beach, 3000 miles from my family,

burnt every bridge on numerous occasions. Quicksand, as Bill wasn't says, stretched all around me. If another man had it done to me, would drink, did to me, I had to kill him with my bare hands. And it's something when you're sitting at night, as I was at 30 years of age and everything's gone and everybody's gone. And you realise, like I realised, you know what, I backed the wrong horse. Because for a long time alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself.

Alcohol worked at work like a charm for many years.

For whatever reason. I don't know and I don't care anymore. I had a hole in my soul and I tried to fill with booze and people and places and things, always looking for an outside fix for an inside job. And it had some symbolic victories along the way, but nothing of any permanence. And I drink on and I drink on, and good people.

If the love of family and friends could get me sober, I would have been sober a long time ago.

But it's not the only thing that worked with another alcoholic. And I drank on, I drank on and I grew up in Northern Ireland ahead of the Troubles,

had a big chip on my shoulder, working class Catholic in the wrong side of the tracks, big chip on my shoulder. In fact, I came to A and the guy says to me, you know something, Paul, you're a well balanced guy. And I thought to myself, finally, somebody that knows what's going on around here, you know,

he said, yeah, you got a chip on both shoulders. You know,

I hear that everything I hear that everybody could always find a needle in the hair stack and sit right on top of it. You know,

So I'm blaming Northern Ireland because my life isn't coming together. I'm just sort of an alcoholic. I'll just give you a quick like when I was started drinking, I'm the sort of guy I was getting my stomach pumped out at 14 and 15 years of age and the sort of guy you might find your front garden tomorrow morning, 1819 years of age, good family, good principles. And I drank on and drank on and drank on

the time of 23 or 20, No 2223, my life falling apart. But I don't want to look in. I'm a, I'm into the blame game. I'm a finger pointer.

I want to lookout. So I come home and I'm blaming Northern Ireland. I said to my father, I come home one night. You know, Alcoholics were such grandstanders. You know, I come home and I said to my father, sit down, I got some bad news for you.

I said I'm going to America and don't try and talk me out of it. He says. Talk you out of I'll help you pack. When are you going

On you go, Columbus.

Let me give you some fatherly advice. Turn left at Greenland, you know

I hopped on only your eye on the fly. You're an alcoholic. Erlingus, Ireland's national airline. The plane's still going down the runway and already the cabin crew serving drinks. The planes are like a 45° angle and the cabin crew like Sherpas pushing these drinks cards to the

and everybody's ringing their bell looking booze Bing Bing Bing Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing.

You're thinking a pinball machine rather than an airplane. You know,

And I washed up in this neighborhood called Rockaway Beach, NY.

Now it's amazing. Our Alcoholics, we got that built in GPS system. You're going to blindfolded me and put me in a sack. I'm going to find a neighborhood that drinks as much if not more than the one I just left. And you talk to old timers and Rockaway Beach is a big Irish American neighborhood and they go all Rockaway Beach, the Irish Riviera.

It should have been caused cirrhosis by the sea. They had more Alcoholics per square foot

and to make matters worse, I got a job as a bartender and I'm used the word bar here in the loosest possible context.

It was a sort of a bar you got thrown into rather than art of, you know,

this bar had it all, Alcoholics, drug addicts, degenerate gamblers. And that was just the staff, that was even the customers, you know,

I'll give you a metal picture and then I'll move on. If you want to see a full set of teeth in this bar, you need a 32 customers, you know what I'm saying? So

male and female,

every now and again, like a glamorous girl, like 3 teeth would stumble into the place,

upset the whole ecosystem, you know? Hey, baby, where have you been? You know,

but water finds its own levels to the Alcoholics. There's a lot of crazy drinking in this bar. And what that helped me to do to get guys drinking first thing in the morning. And the story of my life. I would draw all these imaginary lines in the sand if I drink in the morning. I was a morning drinker for years. I've ever the only fact that I can operate in that job. I was in a job where I could walk behind the bar at 6:00 at night and the first drink I poured was mine.

So every line I would drive, every line I would draw in the sun, I would reach it, feel comfortable and step over it.

I think that's called denial for the alcoholic. But alcohol is conning, buffering and powerful and above all is patient. If you be alcoholic, it'll get you. And it got me, but good. The worst years of my drinking, 27 to 30, were after I made a firm conviction not to drink anymore. The worst years, the time I was 26 or 27, I'm hitting hospitals, I'm having convulsions, seizures, round the clock trunks, and you know the equation. The drunks get longer

and appear between them gets shorter and reached that point. I'm really trying to stop drinking. I'm doing a lot of things It talks about in chapter 3. I'll stop for this and I'll stop for this and I'll I'll make an oath, some proclamations and there wasn't many around, but any that were, I'm swearing in your life and I'm swearing in mine. But I drink again and I drink again and it's one more attempt at not drinking, followed by one more failure drinking, followed by one more attempted not drinking. Odd. Infinite them, as our book says.

I live in that terrible place, that round the clock drinking.

I love that iconic scene in that movie. The last weekend when Rey Milan's wakes up and he knows he's got a second bottle and he's panicking for another drink. And then he looks up and he sees it in the light fixture and the bottle is casting a shadow across the ceiling. I, Billy Wilder, the director, was an alcoholic, but he knew about imagery

living under the shadow of a whiskey bottle. I lived under the shadow of a whiskey bottle for many years. Not tonight, Not tonight, my friends, who are living in the sunlight of the spirit here and Alcoholics Anonymous,

and I'm sitting there drinking around the clock against my own will, shackled to self by the very biochemistry of this disease. I used to have seizures coming off drink. Now I'm having them while I'm drinking. I'll give you a little vignette. I try to stop drinking

by myself. I'm not drinking terrible, believe me. If you're new here tonight, there's a difference between giving up and letting go. Not drinking the the minutes feel like hours and the hours feel like days. I feel like I'm sitting in a cell, like the kind of Monte Cristo marking them off on the wall. I'm free today because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm as free as any time I've ever been in my life.

I'm from Northern Ireland. We sang about freedom, we marched, we fought in the streets for freedom. I wouldn't have known freedom of jumped up beside me. I'm free tonight. I'm as free tonight as we've been in my life. I'm free from the one guy I could never get free from, which is me. I'm living the one place I never lived, which is right here, right now. Every time I was going to have a nervous breakdown in a A, it was half an hour from now. I never actually happened. You know,

I was a fearful person and a fearful person will always find something to be afraid of.

There's a boogie man behind every tree and I'm sitting in that apartment. I'll give you 1 vignette. I'm trying to come off Drake. I used to come off these drunks and I'd sit there and I'd say to myself, OK Paul, let's try and look at this with some degree of what? Why am I doing this? And here's the best that I could come up with before I came to a a lack of willpower. I've had more willpower. I could have half a dozen drinks and go home like that guy.

Lack of discipline.

I was always a rebel buck in the system

and then my ears in the hole was punishment from God. He's had it in from me from day one. I got to A and I found out none of those reasons are true. I drink alcoholically because for a long period of my life alcohol is a suitable treatment for alcoholism. But you know what? It stops working and I end up with the jumping off place. I've been the jumping off place twice in my life, once with drink and once without drink and no program. Different type of pain, but pain nonetheless.

So I'll just give you a little vignette. I'm in this bar of of what alcoholism is. I found the hardware.

If you're new here tonight. A drinking problem is solved by not drinking. Our book talks about it. The heavy drinker, a medical reason, a romantic reason, and they stop or moderate, No problem. I know some heavy drinkers. They can do that, not us. The evidence is stacked to the ceiling that I shouldn't be drinking and I'll What is insanity? Bill Wilson says insanity for an alcoholic is not the drinking,

it's the rationalization of the first drink while to physically sober. I walked in the bar stone cold, physically sober and told myself it's OK to drink again when it wasn't

a Nazi insanity they're talking about in here and I.

I'm in this bar drinking. One night I collapsed an alcoholic seizure, woke up in a hospital where I've been before and a restraining sheet strapped down

and they give me some Librium and get me off the ceiling. And a couple of days later there's a person by at my bedside who mattered a life a lot in my life at that time. And I wasn't trying to be cinematic, but I took her hand and I says I don't know why I can't drink, but it's obvious I can't drink and I will never drink again.

If you'd have got an oath, I would have signed it in blood. Bob D says Paul, that I put you on a lie detector. You would have passed with flying colours. And I would have because I believed it as much as I believed anything. But you see, here's the problem. And if you're new here tonight, this is the problem. Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had nothing between me and the first drink.

A thought would become an obsession. An obsession will become a reality and once the clock starts ticking on that sequence of events, I have no way of myself of stopping the clock up in this moment in time. I have never beaten an obsession to drink and I've got into the ring many times. It's like getting into the ring with a heavyweight champion. My 8 year old daughter could say Daddy don't get in the ring, but don't get in the ring means don't take a drink and I don't know hard not to take a drink before I came to a A. So I get back in the ring and I

town myself. It'll be different this time. I'll Bob and I'll weave and I'll stay off the ropes, but the result is always the same, sooner or later. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I'm laying flat on my back looking up the lights

said how did this happen again? And it's the epitop of the alcoholic. This time it will be different.

And I I was in that hospital and I left that hospital. And if you'd have told me I was gonna drink again, I'd have said you're out of your mind. And if you're new here tonight, I implore you,

they get something between you and the first drink. And maybe you're saying, oh, I just got one day. This all seems very complicated, believe me. We have a symbol here in Alcoholics Anonymous, an emblem, and there's three parts to it, Unity, service and recovery. And I believe you can put all three parts into your life from your very first meeting.

Unity we do together. I can't do alone. Many meetings. Make it easy if you make it hard. No, make it impossible. I got to be here,

service heard a guy Sandy B said one day that has paid great and alcoholic tsunami as a servant. Why a book talks about it. I'm shackled to self driven by 100 forms of it. My Holy Trinity is me, me, me.

Have you put away one more chair than when you sat on? Congratulations, you're doing service recovery. Maybe the steps seem like a foreign concept. We got slogans. Live and let live. Easy does it one day at a time. They were like the banisters to the steps for me. So I believe you can put all three parts into your life from your very first meeting. And I'm going to tell you something, and I'm talking here not in the theoretical, I'm talking in the pragmatic. You can stay dry in two parts of the triangle. You may even stay dry in one part of the triangle.

But if you want to be sober, if you want to experience, what's an offer here? It's been my experience. I had to put all three parts into my life. Hey,

alcoholic tsunamis, enough for people that need it. It's not even people that want it. It's for people to do it. It's a doing program. It's in the doing, and it's in doing things that you don't even believe in. I thought I had to intellectually sign off and everything. Oh, let me see these steps. OK. Oh, that makes sense. OK, I'll do that one. Maybe I'll do this one. Nonsense. Complete nonsense.

And the grace of God now is you can go through that program merely with your sponsor, or you can go through kicking and screaming.

But is in the grace of God, the result at the end is the same, a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps.

What is alcoholic tsunamis? If you're new here tonight, people say, oh, you're just in arms like the way from a drink. I suppose that's true. I'm 12 steps away from a drink, and that's a long, long way from when I first came in here.

But they're not 12 steps up to anything. They're 12 steps down to a sense of humility. I've seen people drink again, Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought I'd never drink again. And that tells me it's a daily reprieve based upon my spiritual condition. And what this program allowed me to do was to go from a place of powerlessness. What is it? And powerless over alcohol. I got a body that won't let me drink and Amanda won't let me stop

my lifestyle management, drunk or sober, when I'm running it and I I like to run it a lot.

This program allowed me to go from a place of powerlessness, not to a place where of power,

but aware of access to power 24/7 on unlimited supply. Because my problem, believe me, I need I'm an alcoholic synonymous because this program helps me do what I couldn't do drunk or sober, and that's live out there in gorge world 24 hours a day under his conditions rather than my demands.

There's days of sports spiritual warfare out there and I better have something between me and the first drink. I don't get me wrong, I don't do this program perfectly. I stay away from the water walkers in a a. They never had a bad Dan Sobrati brigade that's been up in my experience.

Alcoholics Anonymous for me is a reality check on how life is going today. This is where the rubber meets the road and there's days I'm sober and there's days I don't drink. But I stayed around here long enough to figure out the difference and know what I have to do. So I encourage you,

I'm going to tell you some if you're new here tonight, you hear people say, oh, I came to AA and I got my life back. I don't want my life back. It sucked.

I'm like, if you want to go right ahead, I had it for 30 years. I could do nothing with it, you know,

Are there people in my life today when I was drinking? Absolutely. But things are different today, like the story used to be my little daughter going to bed the world out there, which it will can huff and it can puff. But if I stay close to the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, my sober house doesn't have to blow down. And we're worried. Before we came to a A, we were lost out there in a sea of booze and there was any coordinates of his pain and misery

and everything. And again, because we're great starters would wash up on dry land and start to get things going again. But everything was built on sand,

no permanence, and the first drink always came along and were washed out with more debris in the last time.

That's not the what's not the way it is today if I stay close to these principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. So if you're new here, I encourage you to get something between you and the first drink. And for me, as I said there, I come out of that hospital and I'll just sum up the difference between a heavy drinker and alcoholism and the insanity of alcoholism. As I said earlier,